SEM.EASY EXPENSE: PROCESS AND CONTROL

Did you know that 75 percent of employees will steal from their company at least once and half will steal repeatedly. That is one of the hardest to swallow findings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce especially for business owners who built their businesses with a lot of help from employees who sacrificed as much as they did in an effort to grow the company. This is just as hard to hear for managers who rely a lot on their subordinates to run the company they are entrusted to lead.

However, just because it is hard to hear doesn’t mean it should be ignored especially because one of every three businesses’ downfall is caused by mismanagement of employee expenses and employee theft. In fact, the U.S. Department of Commerce calculated that a total of $50 Billion goes to unofficial or questionable employee spending .

If you still can’t seem to wrap your head around those amounts, consider this. For every dollar you make, 20 cents go to employee theft or irresponsible spending. Twenty percent of those employees are completely aware of what they are doing, its repercussions and would do it again.

Whether a company has a rock solid system on how reimbursements are made, petty cash is released or other money-related matters are processed, 75% of these misuse of funds or theft will never be found out and if companies do, it won’t be until 18 months after . Part of the problem is that managers get a lot of power and trust that their signatures aren’t questioned anymore. This is why 55% of theft or irresponsible spending is committed by managers.

If you are running a store, your luck is even worse as this is the industry where employees are more likely to steal company resources or spend more money irresponsibly because of the nature of the business. In fact, American Society of Employers reported that businesses involved in the business of selling goods lose $53.6 Billion a year in theft and irresponsible spending .

Know Where Your Money is Going

sem.EASY EXPENSE is designed to give you:
• control of employee requests and expenses
• full and detailed archive all request, rejected and approved spending
• documentation of all spending based on projects or departments
• ability to cross check the spending versus the allocated budget

The most important benefit that sem.EASY EXPENSE offer is the ability to do all these without having to devote hours of your time to it because your time is better spent growing the business instead of running it.

Set Process

sem.EASY EXPENSE is a tool that allows you to centralize all financial requests in one place. When a request is made, a field is provided so that it can be connected to a certain department or project. This ability to automate the connection provides you with an alert whether a project or department is going over budget.

Further, since each request is credited to a specific team member or employee, there is better governance through:
- accountability
- transparency
- accuracy

Accountability

The reason many employees get away with theft or irresponsible spending is the lack of open and accurate record of their spending. Let us assume you are running a small company of 50 employees with most of them having been with the company for more than five years. Procurement of supplies is usually assigned to an employee. Although it seems efficient to have one employee order everything, it does not give you a clear picture of how employees are using company supplies.

With sem.EASY EXPENSE, you can assign one person per department to request supplies. With the ease of use, it will not take their time away from their main job and will allow each department to be accountable for what they request knowing that everything they spend is visible to the managers and owners.

sem.EASY EXPENSE has even more benefits for companies like construction companies. With multiple projects, project heads are usually in-charged of keeping track of expenses including screening requests for materials and payments. sem.EASY EXPENSE will make all requests visible to you while allowing your managers to continue control over all the projects.

Transparency

The most common form of employee theft comes in the form of bloated reimbursements, careless spending and misuse of funds. Employees who do it habitually do it because they don’t get caught. They don’t get caught because the things they do are hidden on receipts and that will most likely not get double checked or verified.

sem. EASY EXPENSE allows you to require that reimbursements come with receipts and with everything visible to you and managers, it discourages any form of inaccuracy from employees. After all, knowing that you can do a spot and random check of all expenses will not only motivate employees to be more efficient and accurate but also the manager that are approving their requests.

Accuracy

There are certain businesses where project managers might request for funds in advance instead of reimbursements. The nature of the business dictates the system. Often, these requests are already within the bounds of a budget that has already been set.

This is where a lot of misappropriations are made. Once everything is allocated and excess funds are determined, it’s easy to “create” new requirements. sem.EASY EXPENSE makes it easier for you to break down the spending with as much detail as you want forcing people that are putting in the information to be accurate knowing that what used to be line items on a general budget now has its own folder.

Process and Control

Sem.EASY EXPENSE is not just about giving you control over every money-related matter in your business. More importantly, it is a process that makes spending more efficient. Each request for reimbursement or release of funds is archived and may be searched using project or department names or any sub categories you want to provide.

Requests may be easily associated to a person for accountability and so is the review and approval of the request. More importantly, tracking each expense and connecting it to a project or department will make review easier. You can easily plan what how to cut back with every figure visible to you.